Sports Talk

As September ends and the leaves change and fall, October rolls in with the crack of the bat and a chill down the spines of 40,000 fans watching a ball fly towards the top of the wall deep in the outfield, with a mixture of hope and fear. In the MLB October is where legends are made and playoff baseball brings its own brand of excitement, where 162 games of effort can all be glorified or ruined in 7 games, 5 games, 3 games, or a single swing. With a heavyweight matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees looming in the fall classic, let’s take a look back at the postseason that was and what we can learn from the construction of playoff teams moving forward.

The MLB has always been separated into two fairly distinct classes, the rich and the poor, the buyers and the sellers, the owners who are willing to spend and those who are not. However, you wish to cut it in the absence of a salary cap there have always been big market teams with seemingly bottomless pockets and small market teams who have to be more strategic in preserving the talent they have. It’s from this divide that two strategies have developed in how to appropriately construct a contender. While the talk of team construction strategies likely conjures an image of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill pouring over tape and spreadsheets in the bowels of the Oakland Coliseum, I’d posit that while “moneyball” was a revolution in its era, the use of analytics and statistics to grade player performance and inform team construction has spread across the wealth divide in the modern era. Instead, the difference truly lies, as it often has, in the method of player acquisition and whether teams are dedicated to internally developing players or acquiring ready-made superstars.

So, which of these strategies is better at creating a contender? In the wildcard round the teams which spent more money on their active rosters were 2-2 with the most notable differential being in the red-hot Detroit Tigers who swept an aging Houston Astros off the back of excellent pitching performances from Tarik Skubal and their bullpen. The division series had two matchups between teams in the top ten of active roster spending (Dodgers vs. Padres, Phillies vs. Mets) and one between teams in the bottom ten of active roster spending (Guardians vs. Tigers). The one matchup between a team whose major stars were developed in the organization against one whose stars were largely acquired came between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees. The Yankees were able to defeat the Royals relatively easily winning the series 3-1. Entering the league championship series the four teams left had the 1^st, 2^nd, and 5^th highest payrolls, with the exception being the Cleveland Guardians whose payroll ranked 23^rd this year. It’s in these series that the layout of team construction truly was put to the test and from which we can learn the most.

The discrepant matchup between the 2^nd highest payroll Yankees and the 23^rd highest payroll Guardians demonstrated a modern David versus Goliath. The Cleveland Guardians have been the epitome of construction through player development, of the nine regulars in their postseason lineup six debuted with the team. In comparison, only four of the regular Yankee starters debuted with the team. Throughout the series the guardians relied mostly upon a small ball approach which has become their staple, and it seemed to work placing runners in scoring position time after time, but despite their ability to put the ball in play they never seemed to be able to string together the third hit to push the man from second home. In contrast to this, the overwhelming power of the Yankees superstars was felt throughout the series. Whenever there was a moment of doubt, one of the Yankees big three would send a ball deep into the stands. The ability of teams built upon the allure of the longball to generate immediate offense proved too much for the Guardians as they fell 4-1. While this paints a bleak picture for fans of small market teams there are some upsides, many of Cleveland’s wounds appeared to be self-inflicted, whether due to wear or fixable mistakes. Most of all, I’d encourage fans to remember the unpredictability of October baseball and consider a ball flying off of David Fry’s bat deep into left field sending the city into riotous joy and preserving the teams hope for one more day, because in the postseason anything can happen.

While David battled Goliath in the American League the National league had its own stilted matchup. Curiously, however, the underdog of this story is not the team with the lower payroll. Our Cinderella, whose magical playoff run saw them rise from the lowest seed in the playoffs all the way to the League Championship series is the New York Mets, the team whose $317 million dollar payroll is the highest of the major leagues. The Mets fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers trading blowout performances back and forth before falling to the strength and depth of the Dodgers lineup. If you are thinking to yourself that this seems antithetical to all of the information I’ve shared prior, you’d be correct, however there is a lesson to be gleamed from this discrepancy. You may have noticed that in prior parts of this article I’ve mainly referenced these teams’ active payrolls, this is the money paid to players currently playing for the team, in contrast teams also carry a retained payroll of money they pay to players no longer on the team. It is within this category where the Mets truly lead the league, their $87 million retained payroll is $23 million more than that of the team with the next highest and far and away more than the $2 million retained payroll of the Twins who rank at the bottom of the league. The bulk of this amount is being paid to Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander who the Mets signed in an attempt to revitalize their starting pitching rotation. The takeaway from this blunder is that money alone cannot buy any team a championship, you must still appropriately evaluate the talent that you bring in, and no matter how marketable, names don’t win games, players do.

Since the beginning of the postseason, the MLB has run a commercial highlighting that its two most marketable players, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are playing in the playoffs. From this point of view the MLB has gotten everything it could have ever wanted in growing the game as its two biggest stars get ready to meet each other on the league’s largest stage. These teams too carry a rich history of rivalry from when the teams were located just a borough apart in New York City. So for now, let’s enjoy all the star power that money can buy and watch another explosive world series, but not forget that in October anything can happen and your team could very well be here next season.